


As Above, So Below

by Raven (singlecrow)



Category: Master and Commander - O'Brian, Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-20
Updated: 2009-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-04 18:46:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/32984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singlecrow/pseuds/Raven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Captain Jack Aubrey, on shore leave in San Francisco, meets a stranger at the opera.</p>
            </blockquote>





	As Above, So Below

**Author's Note:**

> For Laura, whose idea it was.

It wasn't as though starship captains habitually went to the opera. Starfleet encouraged its officers to maintain an interest in the arts – apart from anything, it was thought crassly absurd when first-contact vessels took care to emphasise Earth's history and the Federation's rich cultural heritage whilst taking every care to avoid the material specifics – but captains on deep-space assignment did not, for example, think to keep abreast of the season's programmes, or timetable their ignominious arrivals into San Francisco dry-dock accordingly.

But the _USS Leander_ – Intrepid-class, once sleek and beautiful, now slightly less so – was perhaps beyond repair this time. Jack Aubrey had brought her in from the Barnard's Star system with some vain hope that there remained enough in the budget for a full refit, but she was being broken up for scrap kilometres above his head, and he was down by the Pacific, watching the gloomy starlight diffusing through the waters and turning over the phrasing of _Turandot_ over and over in his head. These things happened. Perhaps it was better to go with the flow.

"A lovely night," said a voice, close at hand.

"What?" he said, more rudely than he'd meant. Looking up, he saw a man in civilian clothes, sitting on the edge of the steps and trailing bare feet in the water. A man with bright eyes and a slightly familiar aspect. "Oh... yes. A lovely night, indeed."

"Note the phosphorescence at the surface," the stranger persisted, and despite himself, Jack followed his gaze to the middle distance, the gentle, dim green glow suffusing the waves. "One recalls an ancient adage: as above, so below."

Jack did not fall to the bait. Above him were the sharp, brilliant points of the orbital docks. Closer than the stars, far more immediate: any one of those moving flashes might be _Leander_'s last, breathless gasp.

"It is always good to see a real appreciation of music." The stranger seemed unrebuffed; there was an ease in his speaking that matched his general demeanour. "It is not often that I am in such truly refined company."

The jigsaw piece clicked: the man had been sitting to Jack's right in the audience, a quiet observer indifferent to Jack's raptures. Jack had barely registered him, but here he was: still quiet, less indifferent. And that was a telling thought; due to their general lack of advance notice as to their whereabouts, there was an unostentatious relaxation of the rules for Starfleet officers at San Francisco's cultural establishments. Captains might, if they were quiet about it, choose to attend the opera that same evening, sitting in a specific row in the stalls.

"You're a Starfleet officer," he said.

"Don't spread it about, I beg you," said his new acquaintance. "It takes so long to iron out the creases from my bearing, and remember to spit."

Despite himself, Jack laughed. "Captain Jack Aubrey, lately of the Leander," he said, briskly. "And yourself?"

"Stephen Maturin," he said, smiling a little in return. "Supposedly Lieutenant Commander, former CMO, happy to be just 'Doctor', if you please."

"Former CMO?" Jack asked, despite himself.

"Former." He was emphatic about that, but now Jack could see the traces of service life about him, a rigid dignity that did not disappear entirely beneath the easy manner, the barefoot capering. "I skip around San Francisco on half-pay and wait for another ship to come along. It's a peaceful life, at least."

"I empathise," Jack said, sighing. "My ship... well, I suppose I don't have a ship any longer. She's up there" – he motioned above him – "having her dents banged out, but she'll never fly again."

"My condolences." It seemed to be meant sincerely, and Jack warmed to him further; there was a peculiar flavour of loss associated with a ship. "Join me?"

At first Jack didn't understand. Then he leaned down, undid his laces and pulled off his boots. The water was surprisingly warm against his feet, and as he sat back against the stone step, watching how the bright algae threw dim light onto the whiteness of his skin, he could feel himself beginning to relax.

Dr. Maturin was humming to himself. "_Nessun dorma_, always _nessun dorma_," he said at length. "It grows late, _mon capitane_."

"I've nowhere to be," Jack said, and for the first time in a long time, that felt liberating, as though the yoke of his commission had strangely, momentarily, lifted.

"A wonderful feeling, is it not?" said his new friend after some time, giving him a quiet, knowing look.

Jack had been flying one-man hoppers at twelve and been a helm ensign before he was twenty, and he knew how to be constantly in motion, pitch and yaw in his blood. He had never been a connoisseur of stillness. It might be time, he thought sleepily, draping himself over the stones holding the last of the heat of the day, to learn something new.

They sat together, quietly, under starships and stars.

*

Some days later, Stephen Maturin hurried through the San Francisco streets, skipping to avoid tramlines and flower sellers, and arrived at Starfleet Command barely a minute late. Nevertheless, he received a frown alongside a supposedly cordially reception; having been moved swiftly into an antechamber with a panoramic view of the Golden Gate, and plied with a fragile cup of coffee with an option on synthehol, he was standing with his back to the glass, and uncomfortably aware that there was a ring of admirals in the room, rear and vice, and a quiet sense that the room was waiting for something.

"Stephen Maturin," Admiral Paris said, at length, without looking at him. "A fine officer, gentlemen, even to the outside world. Came to the Academy from Trinity College, Dublin, and the Sorbonne, where he excelled in the scientific pursuits. A renowned surgeon, physician and naturalist."

Unsure whether he was intended to respond to this, Stephen took a deep draught of the cooling coffee and said nothing.

"But there is, perhaps, more to be said," Paris continued, and for the first time looked directly at him, eyes chilly blue in the severity of his features. Stephen had known the man's son, a far brighter soul who shared some of Stephen's own tastes in recreational substances, at the Academy. He winced slightly at the memory, then drew himself up straighter.

"Dr. Maturin. Would you tell the company where your official identification states that you were born."

"Port Mahon, on the Spanish island of Minorca," Stephen said, levelly.

"And now would you tell the company, please, where you were born."

"Euskara, a Federation colony in the Neutral Zone." Feeling something else was required, he added: "I was forcibly returned to Earth following the outbreak of Cardassian hostilities."

"You see?" Once again, Admiral Paris turned to address the room. "It is interesting, is it not, how many individuals we come across of this type. Intelligent, educated, with honourable lineage, and yet... dissatisfied. Luckily for him, and for us" – a glance at Stephen – "Dr. Maturin has not followed their path. And in not following it, he is all the better placed for understanding how it may be followed by others."

There was a long pause, and then, as if on cue, a palpable relaxation, as the masses of admiralty stood at their ease. "I move now to brighter things," Paris said. "There is a new ship. Intrepid-class, but small: a science vessel of a limited complement."

"_Surprise_," said a grizzled fleet admiral, also standing by the window; catching Stephen's eye, he gave a flicker of a smile.

"Quite correct," Paris said. "She will be emerging from the shipyards within the day, and be ready for launch within the week. I am sure there are both political and meritocratic considerations in play now that her officers are being commissioned. However, there will be no discretion granted to the new captain in one respect of one officer: the CMO. Dr. Maturin."

"Yes, sir," Stephen said, quickly, standing to attention. He was aware of the silence, the warmth of the sun on his back. It must be edging toward sunset in the bay.

"You will have your orders. In the meantime, I shall say only this: this ship will not be receiving political envoys; it shall not be making first contact. It shall pursue research objectives only. Nevertheless, science has a regrettable tendency not to respond to Federation boundaries."

"Yes, sir."

"You will, of course, be free to pursue many of your interests. Research must be done even on the edges of Cardassian space. That said. You know of the Maquis, Doctor – you know what they have done, and can do. In the Federation, unity is everything."

"Yes, sir."

"You will be leaving Earth within a few days; I advise you wrap up your affairs. Dismissed, with the most grateful thanks of us all."

They did seem to be sincere, Stephen thought to himself, as he edged out of the room and down the echoing halls. That might be the worst of it. The sun was edging into the ocean when he hit the sidewalk, and he could feel the internal urge to walk down towards the bay. At one time, to go west had been a metaphor made life: a way to indicate that eternal wanderlust, that very human desire to go further up, further on, further, further into uncharted space. Perhaps that had been why Starfleet Command had been placed here, on the edge of the world that had brought it into life.

Or maybe it was just because of the restaurants. It seemed pressing that he acquire a drink.

*

It was all something of a blur, now. The urgent call, the hushed silence as he stood in the room and promised to keep and uphold what they all held so dear, the rush and flurry of goodbyes and promises to write. And then the stratospheric rise into Earth orbit, that made his eyes widen and his ears pop, and then that brief, magical pause as the curves and lines of the starship unfolding out against the bleaker glory of space.

The captain's chair was comfortable as he remembered, though. Captain Jack Aubrey, on the bridge of the USS Surprise, was come to his element. His crew were making their slow way aboard – handpicked by Starfleet, mostly, they were being brought from other ships in other docks, and many from shore leave on dozens of other worlds. Engineers were placing the finishing touches on the anterior warp nacelle, and there were dozen of other smaller things to be done – fresh supplies of everything from synthehol to proton torpedoes, the arriving crew to be allotted quarters, the hydroponics bay to be stocked. Technically, Jack had nothing to do. It made him twitch.

A slight, melodic chime brought him around from the reverie. "Admiral Paris to Captain Aubrey."

"Yes, sir!" Jack said, smartly, and left the scurrying ensigns and engineers to their work, retreating to his ready room, still bare and featureless as its blueprint.

"Your Chief Medical Officer asks permission to come aboard. Stand by for transport."

The request for permission, Jack thought wryly on his way down to the transporter room, was a mere formality. But he had been mere acting-captain of the _Leander_, and briefly at that; there had been no time to adjust to the deference the world now thought his due, and no chance for the novel gloss to wear away. With a slight smile lingering about his lips, he entered in time to see the figure materialise on the pad.

"Permission to come aboard," said a familiar voice. "I mean it; once you've laid eyes on me, you are quite within your rights to pitch me back into the Pacific."

"Dr. Maturin!" Jack said. "What a surprise for the _Surprise_, to be sure!"

Stifling a groan, Stephen stepped off the pad and took in his surroundings, and Jack was pleased to note his smile, despite the rough manner. "Let me show you to your sickbay," he said, cheerfully. "No, it's quite all right, it's not as if I have anything to do."

"It appears this ship is so marvellous that its very captain is superfluous," said Stephen cheerfully, and brushed the dust of transport off his uniform before following Jack through the elegantly silent doors.

"I must say," Jack said, "when I heard they were sending me a doctor, I had no inkling that it might be you. They've been sending ships out into space with nothing but an EMH – an Emergency Medical Hologram, you know."

"Quite barbaric," Stephen said briskly. "Well, now, everything seems in order." He was looking around the clean, tidy area, well-supplied with equipment and rapidly-circulating air. "I daresay its many modern conveniences will become apparent the very second an ensign staggers in with a leg hanging on by a thread."

"I hope there will be precious little of those sorts of thing," Jack said, quickly. "It's a survey mission only, you know. Just a little planetary exploration and star mapping, nothing strenuous."

"Yes, of course," Stephen said, evenly. "Of course."

And he said very little more of import, even when shown to the bridge, the astrometrics labs and hydroponics. A small smile drifted around his lips as he was shown his research facilities and quarters, but that was all.

"He's an odd cove," said his First Officer, cheerfully, a little later, "but he's a good sawbones, like others we might mention, and that's all there is."

That was all there was, Jack supposed – and it would do.

*

The _USS Surprise_ left the Sol system on impulse power, coasting into the Kuiper Belt marginally slower than the light from the stars.

It seemed appropriate, so Jack had asked Stephen to dine with him, not in his ready room but back in the observation deck. Like other ships in the fleet, notably the Enterprise-D, the space was used for the benefit of the crew, with a small bar selling lurid, many-worlds cocktails and the replicator's finest in the way of comestibles.

Stephen was about to deliver his professional opinion on Jack's meal – "My dear, it will not be you who carves out the length of your arteries with a laser scalpel" – when he felt it, the quiet roll of the ship beneath his feet.

Jack was pleased. "We just entered warp."

"There's a particular flaw in the Intrepid starship class," Stephen said, without pause for nicety or rank, "or perhaps you might call it a feature, I'm unclear. If you were to stand just in this one spot" – a pause, whilst he rearranged Jack, hands loosely curled on his shoulders – "and look up, straight up… ah, there."

Jack had flinched. He couldn't have helped it, in the same way he couldn't help breathing; in this one spot, perhaps unique on the ship, the filters that transformed the eldritch light of subspace into the comforting, smooth lines of stars in warp were failing – and for a second he had been plunged into giddy, fractal distortion.

Stephen was grinning. "Quite something, isn't it?"

"Yes," Jack said faintly; he was rubbing at his eyes, but the afterimage remained. "It is quite something."

Eventually, though, he grinned back. An odd cove he was, but this wasn't at least the renowned loneliness of command – and with barely a creak or missed beat, the _Surprise_ was headed for open space.


End file.
